Cittareale fire, August 2017 Amatrice, Accumoli, Cittareale
The fire started on 28 August 2017 in Cittareale, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 667 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
Number 25 in Italy in 2017, of 361.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 667ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 28 Aug 2017 – 31 Aug 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 28 Aug
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 59
- in a single hotspot: 135 MW
- Danger at start
- 18
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 148MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.8 mm on 1 Sept.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Rome boundary: geoBoundaries · ISTAT, National Institute of Statistics (CC BY 3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Amatrice 2,251 inhabitants · 9.7 km from the centre290 ha reached on 28 Aug1.7 %
-
Accumoli 522 inhabitants · 6.2 km from the centre252 ha reached on 29 Aug2.9 %
-
125 ha reached on 28 Aug2.1 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
What burned
- Other natural land70 %
- Broadleaved forest16 %
- Mixed forest6.8 %
- Coniferous forest4.2 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland3.3 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Aug | 25.3 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 29 Aug | 19.8 °C | 40 % | 40 km/h | 3.1 mm | Very low 4 |
| 30 Aug | 22.3 °C | 27 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 31 Aug | 23.7 °C | 39 % | 34 km/h | 2.3 mm | Very low 4 |
| 1 Sept after | 17.6 °C | 59 % | 53 km/h | 5.8 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Detections table · 59Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cittareale fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 28 August 2017 and 31 August 2017: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 667 hectares (6.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Amatrice (290 ha, 1.7 %); Accumoli (252 ha, 2.9 %); Cittareale (125 ha, 2.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Cittareale and came within 0.9 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 25.3 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Italy (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 112 · 1515 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 59 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM4 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.